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Australian university calls dispute over chiropractic degree a “turf war”

A group of the nation’s top medical experts has condemned the planned launch of a new university course to train chiropractors, denouncing it as “non-science” that could encourage the provision of dangerous treatments to children.

The letter to the university’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Graham Pegg, and Dean of Medical and Applied Sciences, Grant Stanley, expresses “concern about the increasing numbers of universities that are allowing non-evidence-based ‘pseudo’ disciplines to be offered to their students”.

“It is the involvement of chiropractors in ‘adjustments’ for children suffering from everything from attention deficit (disorder) to bed-wetting to asthma that is particularly disturbing to us,” it said.

Credit: @Blue_wode on Twitter

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In a letter to the University of Central Queensland the doctors accuse the academics of engaging in non-scientific teaching based on pseudo disciplines.

The university is unrepentant. It’s calling the attack part of a turf war by the medical profession against chiropractors.

What will be the curriculum for such a degree? It is hard to imagine that the courses can be purely scientific-based since chiropractic at its core is not a scientific idea (subluxation theory). A university degree in such subjects deserves serious questioning. The “turf war” angle is a disturbing one for the univeristy to take.

We want the deans to acknowledge the importance of our universities remaining champions of rigorous academic standards and remind them of the primacy of the evidence base for scientific conclusions and health-care practices.

We have no doubt that they will agree with this sentiment. So we can’t help but wonder if they’ve had a chance to look, in depth, at some of the nonsense claims many chiropractors make about the therapeutic benefits they can deliver.